The number of open source vulnerabilities hit an all-time record in 2017 with 3,500 reported vulnerabilities - that's 60% higher than the previous year, and the trend continues in 2018. Since it’s impossible to keep up with today’s pace of software production without open source, development and security teams are challenged to meet security objectives, without compromising on speed and quality. It's time to for organizations to step up their open source security game. Join WhiteSource's Senior Director of Product Management, Rami Elron, as he discusses: the current state of open source vulnerabilities management; organizations' struggle to handle open source vulnerabilities; and the key strategy for effective vulnerability management.

1. THE STATE OF OPEN SOURCE
VULNERABILITIES
MANAGEMENT
Presented by:
Rami Elron, Senior Director of Product Management at WhiteSource

2. Key Findings:
1 Reported open source security vulnerabilities are on the
rise.
2
The absence of standard practices and developer-
focused tools lead to inefficient handling of open source
vulnerabilities.
3 Prioritization is crucial to ensure companies address the
most critical vulnerabilities on time.
4 Prioritization based on usage analysis can reduce security
alerts by 70% to 85%.

3. OPEN SOURCE SECURITY
VULNERABILITIES ARE ON THE RISE
1

4. The number of disclosed open source vulnerabilities
rose by over 50% in 2017
NUMBER OF REPORTED OPEN SOURCE VULNERABILITIES ROSE BY 51.2% IN 2017

5. FREQUENCY OF USE OF OPEN SOURCE COMPONENTS
of developers rely on open
source components
96.8%

6. of all open source projects are
vulnerable, but when it comes to
the most popular open source
projects…
7.5%

7. But, it's not all bad.
The rise in awareness also led to a
sharp rise in suggested fixes…
of all reported vulnerabilities have at least one
suggested fix in the open source community
97.4%

8. Information about vulnerabilities is scattered across hundreds of resources,
usually poorly indexed and therefore unsearchable
OF REPORTED OPEN SOURCE
VULNERABILITIES APPEAR
IN THE CVE DATABASE
86%
OVER

9. DEVELOPERS ARE NOT EFFICIENTLY
MANAGING OPEN SOURCE
VULNERABILITIES
2

10. Developers rated security vulnerabilities as the #1 challenge
when using open source components
TOP CHALLENGES IN USING OPEN SOURCE COMPONENTS

11. Developers spend 15 hours each month
dealing with open source vulnerabilities
(e.g. reviewing, discussing, addressing,
remediating, etc.)
The cost is even higher, considering that the more experienced
developers are the ones remediating
HOURS SPENT ON OPEN SOURCE VULNERABILITIES PER
DEVELOPERS' EXPERIENCE

12. WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN A VULNERABILITY IS
FOUND?
1.0%
34.1%
13.3%
18.7%
33.0%
Out of the monthly 15 hours
only 3.8 hours are invested
in remediation.
The lack of set practices and
tools can explain these
inefficiencies.

13. PRIORITIZATION IS KEY TO OPEN
SOURCE VULNERABILITY
MANAGEMENT
3

14. Perfect security is impossible.
Zero risk is impossible.
We must bring prioritization of application vulnerabilities to DevSecOps. In
a futile attempt to remove all possible vulnerabilities from applications, we
are slowing developers down and wasting their time chasing issues that
aren’t real.
10 Things to Get Right for Successful DevSecOps
Neil MacDonald, Gartner

15. 25.2%
11.6%
15.1%
17.3%
Survey results show that developers prioritize remediation of
vulnerabilities based on available information, not necessarily
on the impact of a vulnerability on the security of an
application.
14.7%
16.2%

16. Security teams analyze
and prioritize
vulnerabilities
Sending emails or
opening issues/tickets
Closing the loop on
resolution is hard
The Common Way of Handling Security Vulnerabilities

17. Bridging the Gap is a Must
Security DevOps Developers

18. WhiteSource Software Confidential
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Reported Vulnerabilities
Can you really handle all of them?
Which ones constitute a real risk?
Which ones should be addressed first?
Effective Vulnerabilities
Less to deal with. Much less.vs.
The Secret to Prioritization:
Reported Vulnerabilities are not Necessarily EFFECTIVE
Focusing on Effective Vulnerabilities Could Enable:
Better development efficiency
Better development effectiveness
Better security

19. A new approach to
prioritizing
vulnerabilities - based
their impact on an
application’s security
EFFECTIVE VULNERABILITY
If the proprietary code is making calls
to the vulnerable functionality
INEFFECTIVE VULNERABILITY
If the proprietary code is NOT
making calls to the vulnerable
functionality
EFFECTIVE VS INEFFECTIVE
VULNERABILITIES IN A COMPONENT

20. After testing 2,000 Java applications, WhiteSource found that 72% of all detected
vulnerabilities were deemed ineffective.
Based on the data collected in our survey, this can be translated to saving 10.5 hours per
month per each developer (70% of 15 monthly hours).

21. EFFECTIVE USAGE ANALYSIS
4

22. Effective Usage Analysis is the technology of prioritizing open
source vulnerabilities based on the way they are used by the
application.
Our beta testing on 25 commercial applications from 12
organizations showed that:
analyzed projects were found to be vulnerable
of the vulnerabilities (effective and ineffective) were
found in transitive dependencies
of all vulnerability alerts were found to be ineffective
of all analyzed projects were found to contain only
ineffective vulnerabilities
ALL
90%
86%
64%

23. Q&A